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AMPHIBIANS that came to stay: How did odd-looking creatures that struggled out of warm equatorial waters to live on land hundreds of millions of years ago end up on a Scottish football ground?

By MICHAEL TAYLOR

Stan Wood is a professional fossil collector who also referees amateur
football matches – a serendipitous combination as it turned out. Ten years
ago, as Wood patrolled the sidelines, attempting to keep peace between a
marauding Bathgate eleven and the local opposition, he made a discovery.
Wood noticed that the walls of the Bathgate football pitch (some 30 kilometres
west of Edinburgh) were made from a most unusual type of rock. It was limestone,
but striated with fine, alternating black and pale brown layers. Wood was
so certain it must contain fossils that he bought up some similar walls
from surrounding fields and began a systematic search.

His hunch was correct, and before long Wood had traced the rock to East
Kirkton, a local lime quarry. The rocks had been neglected by fossil collectors
since its closure in 1844. Today, however, that quarry is one of the most
important palaeontological sites in the world. Recent research shows that
the limestone there was laid down under unusual circumstances just at the
time when aquatic animals were evolving into terrestrial pioneers. These
origins mean that fossils and information from East Kirkton are transforming
our understanding of early land animals.

Cutting edge

Between 1984 and 1987, Wood made initial excavations. Most of his finds
were in the ‘float’ – loose rock left by quarrymen – making it impossible
to know exactly which part of the quarry they came from. Then the National
Museums of Scotland leased the site from West Lothian District Council in
1987 and a team of palaeontologists began collecting the fossils. By recording
their distribution bed by bed and studying …